Aix Marks the Spot

Last weekend Elly and Jean-Hughes took a little holiday and I found myself alone in Aix. I got the chance to walk around in my underpants until 2PM drinking coffee, one of my favorite activities. A little rejuvenating solitude is always just the thing to restore my spirits.

The city of Aix-en-Provence is an old Roman town, originally a military station connecting the empire with the wilderness of Gaul. Everywhere you look there are Roman fountains, an old aqueduct, an underground catacomb. Laid on top of this structure is the provençal lifestyle with its simple, country cuisine, big markets and slow pace. The final layer of the town is newly acquired prosperity and chic facade: the stylish and attractive young people, the Dior shop on every corner and the white, modern restaurants. It seems like a resort town that could be in any number of Western countries, but there's a certain charm to the town...like a little layer cake of unique cuteness.

While Elly and Jean-Hughes were away I took an afternoon to wander around, and was swept up in the enchanting moment of being alone in Provence. I indulged my little girl fantasies of France one night by having a dinner of cheeses, foie gras, chocolate and pink wine while watching Sofia Coppola's Marie-Antoinette. After the movie was over, I went out to sit on the patio. Our apartment is on the top floor of an old building on a narrow street. From there I have a wonderful view of the neighbors, especially if I climb onto the tiled roof. It was like getting a bonus reel. One of my favorite past-times has always been to walk around neighborhoods at dusk. At this time of night people usually have their lights turned on but haven't yet closed their drapes, so you can peer into their private world. You see a couple making dinner, a woman talking on the phone and picking at her toes, or someone just sitting in front of the television. Usually people aren't doing anything terribly interesting, but there is a certain twilight calmness that I find in seeing these mundane moments. You also just get to see the insides of their houses or apartments. I'm always surprised by how many folks live with bare white walls...no posters, pictures or paint...just unadorned sheet rock. It's depressing, but an interesting peek into the mind of most of humanity. So as I was sitting on the little porch in Provence I was able to see the woman two floors down sitting at her computer, typing something, her lax face blue from the glow of the screen. I also saw a man in his Euro-brief undies hopping around on one foot trying to make dinner for himself. It's moments like these that make me delighted to be alone, to just watch and smile and not need to try communicating with anyone why something so insignificant as a nearly-naked and limping man brings me so much joy.

I also took a little adventure over the weekend to see an event called "Transhumance." In a small town called Eguilles, about 11 kilometers from Aix, they hold a yearly festival celebrating the moving of their sheep herds to summer pastures. The shepherds parade their flocks through the village, do some dancing, break some bread and get a blessing from the local priest. Apparently, this is fairly common practice in rural Europe. I arrived by bus on Sunday morning for the mass. I'll spare you the comedy-of-errors portion of the tale and just skip right to the details of the event. It was a traditional service, highlighted with music from the local "peasant" band: a group of people in head-scarves and vests who played flutes, drums and other rustic instruments. They brought one symbolic sheep inside for the mass and after communion the whole procession moved into the square where they joined the rest of the flock. The priest said a prayer for the health and safety of the sheep and sprinkled some holy water in their general direction. The ewes seemed a little freaked out and the music played on.

Overall, the event was nothing to write home about, but there was a moment during the mass that so clearly exemplified why I love being alone. I have to preface this by saying that I was raised deep in the church...going to church three times a week, marrying a youth pastor at 19, being exorcised twice kind of raising. My earlier anger and rebellion from this upbringing has mellowed, much to my surprise. What remains is a calm, soft place inside of myself that feels awe and mystery at very unexpected moments. I had such a moment at the church service for the sheep. The priest was transforming the communion. He took first the wafer and raised it to the heavens, concentrating and incanting. Then he took the cup of wine and did the same. After lifting both the wafer and the wine, this powerful, beautifully robed, old man bent his knees and bowed before the communion table. His posture when he knelt said that this kneeling was neither ritualistic nor obligatory. I have felt this same overwhelming moment before; when you kneel and prostrate yourself not because you have to but because you must. Your knees and head bow of their own accord in the face of an overwhelming feeling of smallness. This priest asked for a miracle, the miracle of turning a dry cracker and some cheap wine into something divine, and, even though he had done it thousands of times before, he still felt overwhelming awe.

I know many people who gravitate towards partnership for the magic that it affords even the most mundane moments. Drinking coffee each morning becomes an act of communion. Going to bed each night becomes a quiet, perfect moment for confession of the day's trials. I have felt this perfect peace in union. I also wonder why all of my moments of true transcendence are alone, why my feelings are amplified in the vacuum of solitude. Is this a paradox?

It'ly

My friend Stephanie makes diagrams of people's story-telling styles, an attempt to graphically depict their individual narrative arcs. She's never made one of mine, but I think if she did it would be an arrow, sliding downhill and ultimately ending in a burning pile of poo. Most of my stories, I'm realizing, are about personal disaster and my negotiations with it. Sorry to ruin the ending, but this one will be no different.

As most of my stories begin, Elly and I made grand plans for the day; we decided to go to Italy. Our plans were rather undefined. In the spirit of the classic American road-trip, we packed some necessities (cheese, bread, blankets, wine, music) and headed in the general direction of the border. Both luckily and unluckily, we did not get more than 2 kilometers outside of Aix. Elly and I have found ourselves in perilous, gas-less situations before while in France, so we made the responsible decision to fill up the tank before we left town. I am no expert on motors, but I did know our car preferred diesel gasoline and we scrutinized our choices at the pump to figure out which one fit the bill. Elly seemed perfectly confident in her choice, so I went inside the station to peruse their chilled beverage selection. We paid and took off for our adventure, chatting about something (which I cannot remember) that seemed both important and totally engrossing at the time. So I didn't really pay much attention when Elly casually mentioned that there was something wrong with the gas pedal. Neither did it really register when she began to look more than a little worried that the car was losing power. Just when Elly was asking me if we should pull over, the car lost power completely and we found ourselves stopped on the shoulder of an off-ramp.

That is when the dream of sleeping on an Italian beach died a sudden and brutal death. Our first instinct was to call Jean-Hughes, Elly's French boyfriend and the owner of the car. He had just left for London the day before and was not available. So we started walking and eventually found a bright orange call box on the side of the freeway. This begins the Shakespearian comedy of errors portion of the tale. It turns out that our terrible French, which thus far had managed to get us by surprisingly well, did not translate AT ALL over the traffic noise from the highway and the horrible connection of the call box. After about six or seven attempts (an hang-ups) to explain our situation to the man on the other end of the line, we finally managed to get across that we needed assistance and he told us to wait by the car. Neither of us was convinced that help was really on the way, but we trudged back to car anyway, mostly out of a lack of other options and the promise of snacks.

We sat for a while on the grassy shoulder, counting the cars that passed by us, (including more than one police vehicle) honking and yelling but not stopping. Finally we got desperate and were able to wave down a taxi. We explained the situation to the man, and he offered to take us to a mechanic so that we could get some help. We got a couple of kilometers down the road when Jean-Hughes called back. He instructed us to return to the car and call the insurance company, whose number was posted on the windshield and which we had repeatedly overlooked while searching for a number to call for help. So back we went to the broken car. The taxi driver was nice enough to talk with Jean-Hughes and let us use his cell phone to call first the insurance company and then the police. I thought, "What a great fella." What I didn't realize was that he was running the meter. 25 euro later, he left us with promises that the police would be there soon to tow the car. So apparently there is a $40 fee in France for someone to call the police.

Elly and I tried to make the best of it and set out a little picnic in the grass and played UNO until the police arrived. We had thought that the police vehicle had come to tow our car out of the way, but this clearly was not their intention. Sections of the highway are contracted to different private companies and only the police really know which section belongs to which mechanic's garage, so their only reason for coming out was to radio the appropriate person. They also put out some orange cones "for safety" and rolled our car backwards a bit and slightly further into the road. They left with assurances that a mechanic was on his way. I watched the whole time and never saw them radio anyone with our location, so I was a little skeptical. One baguette, three blocks of cheese and seven hands of UNO later, a tow truck appeared. He towed us to the garage, but at this point, it was about 15 minutes til closing time and they would not be able to fix the car until the morning. Just when we were feeling like the worst was over, the secretary also informed us, after having gotten a hold of the insurance company, that the tow and repairs would not be covered by the policy because "the car is too new." The insurance seemed to feel that such things should be covered by the manufacturer's warranty, but, the secretary told us, the manufacturer probably wouldn't cover it either because it was our own stupidity in choosing the wrong fuel that has caused this mess. This was a real low point. We asked if anyone was headed towards Aix for the night and would give us a ride. They simply pointed the direction of the bus station.

What do you do when life gives you lemons? I eat lemon glacé with raspberry foam at a two star Michelin restaurant. Some turn to retail therapy for solace, Elly and I turn to cuisine therapy. That night we ate at Le Formal, a quite little underground restaurant in the heart of Aix-en-Provence that served us a wonderful seven course meal and a chilly bottle of champagne. Like my friend Ana told me this morning, "I felt really bad about spending too much money yesterday on a taxi, so when I got back I went to H&M and bought a bunch of clothes to make myself feel better." It makes no sense, but it works. With each tiny course that was brought to our table, each time the server refilled my champagne flute, I felt the waves of anxiety melt away. When the final course was served, I had completely forgotten the events of the day. All I thought about was the way that the vanilla ice cream with orange zest exploded on my palate (literally, there were Pop-Rocks in it) and made me imagine that it was the fourth of July in my mouth.

Pyranees, Attempt #1

We really did try to make cheese in the Pyranees, but let me tell you, it was not in the cards. After Elly and I left Chateau Brandeau last week, we went directly to our next farm...our first cheese-making farm! But that's the thing about traveling with the WWOOF program, it's a gambling man's way to see the world. We wanted to bet on this "traditional," "rustic" operation as an idyllic spot, high in the mountains, perfect for learning the old-fashioned way to craft fromage. We really were betting on the wrong horse, though. When we entered the house of our new hosts, it was like stepping back in time 100 years, but not in a romantic way.

Our first red flag was the smell of the house. One of the blessings and curses of inhabiting my body is a very sensitive nose. When I entered our hosts' home that day, my nose was screaming, "There is a male goat sleeping under my new bed and he smells like all the worst parts of a barnyard and a brothel!" I thought that I might gag. Our second scarlet banner was what appeared to be a hoard of sick, screaming children running rampant through the house. There were actually only three of them, but sometimes children have the singular ability to appear to be in all places at once, their tiny voices around you on all sides at once, the affect multiplied by each child added to the mix. Our third giant flashing red light was the filth. I have seen some dirty places and am not easily deterred by a little bit of untidiness, but when I used the bathroom, I can honestly say that the last time it was cleaned was sometime last century. I thought to myself, "It's okay, I can just use the little creek outside to wash up every day;" I could not imagine anything akin to cleaning of one's self happening in that room...my brain said, "Error, error! Clean cannot happen in this room." The fourth pillar of fire in that dark night of our discontent was the cheese making operation itself. When we went outside (mostly to escape the stink), we saw their animals, sheep mostly, all of whom looked like they were in deep negotiations with the Grim Reaper. They all looked so sick and ill-tended, I just wanted to open their little pen and yell, "Be free, little sheep! Get out of here while there's still time!" Elly also saw the cheese making molds floating in a muddy hole next to the creek, covered with green fur. I felt like I was getting food poisoning just hearing about it.

And that's when we decided: no amount of trying or attitude-adjusting is going to make this into an educational or pleasant experience. So, in our very broken French, we politely explained that we would like to go back to the train station, "nous sommes desolee," and apologized for wasting their time. The family was actually quite nice about it and offered to drive us back down the big hill to town so we could find a train to somewhere, anywhere but there. It was at this moment that I had a moment of self-doubt. After all, the family was well-meaning and clearly kind...they were going to take us back to the station and not make a big stink about it. Maybe I had judged too quickly. Maybe I could learn to appreciate with the randy goat odor living under my bed, maybe I would commune with nature in unexpected ways each morning while I bathed in the shivery creek. Maybe I was just being a prissy American.

And then this happened:
The daughter of our hosts was mother to two of the three aforementioned sick and crying children. She was going to take us down to town to catch a train. She simply asked that we watch her children for a moment while she made a phone call. She indicated that her youngest, referred to simply as "bebe," was outside and could we please keep an eye on him for a moment. Elly and I went out to the garden to check in on him, but he simply was not there. We started wandering further and further in circles around the house calling, stupidly, "bebe, bebe!" The kid was nowhere in sight. It was then that I had a mild panic attack, and in the flash of a second I saw with sudden clarity the scene unfold before me: the swift creek by the house, the little child washed downstream, the angry French family blaming us for this tragedy, the imprisonment in the Bastille. At this point the other child wandered out of the house and I swoooped her up, clamping her tightly onto my hip, and thinking, "I am NOT losing this one." I kept asking the little girl, "Ou est ta frere? Ou est ta frere?" She had no idea. I ran down to the creek. Then I hear the mother and grandmother join the fray, screaming "bebe, bebe!" in voiced of clear and awful distress. At the exact moment that my panic was starting to rise up out of my chest into my throat, I heard a cry of relief from the mother. I looked behind me and saw her by the car, holding her child. She explained that before she went into the house to make a phone call, she had put the child into his car-seat, but had simply forgotten she'd put him there. "J'ai oubliee...." she kept saying.

And then I knew with complete clarity that leaving was exactly the right thing to do.

So Elly and I ended up back at the train station a few hours later and considerably more shaken. It was still early afternoon, so I stayed at there to figure out our train options for the day and Elly wandered up to the Tourism Office to try to figure out some lodging for the night and use the phone. She returned with a very small French woman who owned the kindest eyes I've ever seen. Karine was from the Tourism Office and had offered to have us stay at her house for the night while we sorted out our next step. At first Elly and I were a little apprehensive, mostly because of our awful luck just hours before, but this woman was so sweet and nice, we thanked her and got into her little station wagon. She took us to her house, introduced us to her husband Jerome and her son Theo and stuck a beer in each of our hands. Her little house was beautiful and she made up a bed for us in the guest room. Karine is the single most hospitable person I have ever encountered in my life. She shared her homemade foie gras and saucison, refilled our glasses with wine, and insisted that we treat her house as if it were our own. She offered to let us stay longer if we liked to enjoy the Pyranees, and we sat on her porch in the warm evening air, admiring the view of the snowy mountains in the distance. Elly and I decided to go back to our home-base in Aix the next morning and Karine deposited us at the station in the morning, helped us speak to the fellow behind the counter and actually cried when we got on the train. I wanted to put her in my suitcase and take her with me. Because of Karine, I know that this is simply my first attempt as discovering the Pyranees....she's like a promise of gold buried in the hills.

Leaving Bordeaux

Last week we left Chateau Brandeau...so sad! In looking through my previous blog posts of the place, I realized that I had mentioned very little about the actual work and learning that happened there. I suppose I was simply too tired to post after a day in fields. Here, I will make up for that omission and tell you a bit about what we were doing during the day. We came to the vineyard during the time when the grapes were just beginning to fruit and set on the vines. This is the time to trim and tie the vines and get rid of the weeds of the excess weeds. At non-organic vineyards weed control is pretty easy--you just spray the base of the vines with Round-Up and call it a day. At organic vineyards, you have to get old-school about it. What this means is a process called décavaillonage: basically this means plowing in between the vines and then hoeing what is missed by the plow. It takes a really long time.

Ana is the hero of this story. God bless her, she just got her drivers' license two months ago, but she manned that tractor for a solid two weeks and took to it like a duck to water. I started calling her the Flash since she would speed through the vineyard in 6th gear. Actually, that's a bit of misnomer...6th gear is still only like 15 miles/hour. I just wanted to give a cool nickname. She was a good sport about it. She did really own that rusting beast of a tractor though.

Eddie and Phil manned the plows, which take a whole lot of caressing and cajoling so that the vines aren't either a) missed by a mile, which means lots of back-breaking hoeing, or b) run over and pulled clean out of the ground. Its intensive, but Eddie, of course, managed to make it chic.

Below is a little video of the plow at work. It gives you an idea of exactly how low tech the operation is.

Elly and I were super enthused, as usual, to be working the plow. Mostly we were just ecstatic to have a break from hoeing and pruning. When we weren't doing the décavaillonage, we were doing épamprage. Here, the French word makes it sound far more glamorous than it actually was. Epamprage is pruning away all of the new shoots from the vine. This allows the vine to give all of its energy to the main, fruit producing branches. Basically, this involves bending over for seven hours a day, while moving very slowly down the row. But, let me tell you, the backs of my thighs are rock solid these days. No pain, no gain.

I also gotta give some serious props to our hosts, Fearn and Andrea. They consistently provided the most wonderful, huge meals for us while we were there. Delicious soups, cheeses, bread (always) wine, fresh fruit and yummy salads every day for lunch and dinner. I didn't think I could eat that much on a daily basis, but I did and was grateful for the abundance. When it wasn't raining buckets, we sat outside and looked at the sheep and pretty fields of vines.

Here is one of the few photos I have of myself (thank you Anna), just because I so rarely include them here.

On a minor foodie side-note, Elly and Ana got totally into cake baking while we were there. It all started with a totally posh cake book from the grocery store and evolved into two masterpieces. I gotta share them here since they were so spectacular. The one above is a lemon cake with candied rose petals and the one below is a ridiculously rich chocolate cake with hand-made truffles. I don't know how either of them had the energy to bake for three hours after spending all that time in the vines, but they did and we were all blown away.

Our last night at Chateau Brandeau was a regular fest, Phil made a traditional English roast with hand-made gravy and yummy roasted vegetables and Fearn broke out some great bottles from his cellar so we could taste the differences that come out in the aging process. And we finished it all with the rose petal cake. A beautiful vineyard, beautiful new friends and a beautiful farewell.

L'Omlette Geante (a.k.a. the giant omlette)

There are certain experiences that you cannot have without the following combination: lots of time, little inhibition and loads of wine. Case in point, yesterday my fellow WWOOFers and I went in search of a giant omelette in Libourne. We saw a sign a couple weeks back promising an omelette with 3011 eggs. This simple quest blossomed into a grand adventure. Let's start at the beginning.

Any great day must begin with a great outfit. Eddy led the way with his fabulous red feathered cap and Elly joined in with an amazing fur one that necessitated a photo shoot for posterity. Somehow she managed look like an old Russian woman, a feat that I'm still not sure how she pulled off. It really did set the tone for the day.

Our first stop was the beautiful, beautiful town of Saint Emilion. I'd heard a lot about how perfect and lovely it was, but it didn't really register until we arrived. It has lovely cobbled streets, a great view of the surrounding valley and lots of charming shops. It also happens to be in a grand cru appellation, which means that the wine from there is extraordinarily expensive ($500 a bottle and up), so the townsfolk have got some bucks to beautify the place. We stopped in to take a peek and have a coffee on our way to the omelette geante.

We drove on to Libourne and tried to find the omelette, which turned out to be much more challenging than we had thought. We assumed that such an amazing culinary feat would be prominently displayed in the center of town, the pride of Libourne. Not so. First we were guided to a dog show in a park, then to a track meet/swap meet in the stadium, finally to a botanical garden, all to no avail. No one seemed to know where the omelette was located. Eventually we followed the trail of some small, out of date signs found ourselves at what was basically the coolest block party ever. Situated in a courtyard for some low-income apartment buildings was the promised omlette. There was an emcee doing karaoke, a huge rummage sale, cheap booze, face painting and lots of colorful area residents. My favorite was a couple of French greasers in leather jackets; I'd swear that the fella was Hugh Jackman's twin. Clearly, we were the only folks in attendance who did not live in that neighborhood.


We did our part to fit in and contribute to the local economy by purchasing bottle after bottle of the 2 euro wine, pilfering through the rummage sale and buying some real gems (a gold sequin purse, a spindle, leather pants, a killer nautical sweater, etc.), and dancing with some men in berets. All in all, I think we blended seamlessly into the crowd.


Let me tell you about the star attraction: 3011 eggs, five men stirring, countless old ladies dicing, slicing and serving, and hundreds of full, happy people. It was an overwhelmingly successful production. The emcee serenaded the men circling the omelette pan, an old dude stoked the fire with old grape vines. It was magic.






Here I will introduce you to Ana. She's a fellow WWOOFer from Chateau Brandeau and seriously might be one of the more amusingly photogenic people I've ever known. Let's just scroll through this little collection for a moment...




And that pictorially sums up how the omelette festival progressed.

And this was the result...we went to Bordeaux, rode a carousel, danced in the street at a cafe, and I fell asleep on the sidewalk from too much wine.

And apparently this is the face that I make after too much wine...

Teaser

3011 + eggs = amazing

Photos and text coming soon....

Daily Prayer

WILD GEESE

You do not have to be good

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Mary Oliver

Fromagerie Tours

I may not have made this particularly clear until now, but the entire point of my travels in France is to learn the art of cheese making. While I was in Hawaii I fell in love with goats. There was a herd at my farm on the Big Island and my host taught me how to make basic fresh milk cheeses from the excess of our milkings each day. Perhaps it is my Aries nature, perhaps it's just their charming personalities, I'm not sure, but there is definitely something about goats that appeals to me. After Elly giggled through watching me milk one morning, we began to hatch a plan: go to the land of good cheese, stay on some farms and learn the art of making delicious French cheeses.

So now here I am in France for the summer. Our first farm happened to be on a winery (mostly because it came so highly recommended), but Elly and I told our hosts at Chateau Brandeau about our intentions for the trip, and they kindly set up some tours of local fromageries for us during our stay in Bordeaux. Last Sunday we went to the farm of their friend Regine. She has a small herd (70 goats) and handmakes her own cheese each day, mainly a fresh milk cheese in the Saint Marcellin style. Each day she and her husband milk the animals in the morning and then take them out to pasture for a few hours in the afternoon. Goats are very smart and easily trainable, so much so that they will stay within calling distance of their herder, not straying off and needing a fence or herding dogs to keep them close. Regine was trodging through the rain, leading her herd back into the barn when we arrived, and keeping dry under the most enormous umbrella I've ever seen. She said that she had sat under that huge umbrella the past few hours, calling to the goats every now and again to stay close, and reading a book in the soggy pasture.

Regine was also kind enough to show us her fromagerie (cheese making room) right off the kitchen in her chateau. We donned little disposable booties over our shoes, and, in half-French/half-English, she explained how she saves a little bit of the milk from the day before to start her culture, then forms the solidified curds into molds for the cheese. Most of her product is sold fresh the next day, but some she leaves to age in the cooler, maturing into a nutty, slightly firm disc of deliciousness after a month or so. In her cozy kitchen she let us sample different varieties, encouraging us to eat it with honey, sugar or jam. Some she had just made the day before and it was wonderfully creamy, with a little herby-freshness at the end.

The second fromagerie we visited was a less down-home and more modern. Fromagerie Van der Horst is a family operation which specializes in gouda. The patriarch is a Dutch immigrant who came to France in 1951 and started the business. He has passed down his recipes to his sons, who took over the operation in 1975. Unlike Regine, it is a cow's milk fromagerie and the Jersey girls were housed in a barn right next door to the tasting room.

Elly and showed up in the morning for our tour and were greeted by a very nice lady with absolutely no English. We know enough to get by in most situations, but this lady had us stumped. I thought that she was asking us "Ou est-que vous livre?" which in my head sounded something like "Where is your book?" This did not strike me as a question at all relevant to the situation, and Elly decided to reply that we were from Chateau Brandeau. This did the trick and we were introduced to a lady whose name sounds a whole lot like "livre." (Upon returning to Chateau Brandeau we asked Fearn and Andrea how to say this lady's name, but, though they both had met her several times, neither of them could pronounce it either; this made me feel like slightly less of an idiot.)

So "Livre" gave us some sanitary white clogs and took us into the big, state-of-the-art cheese making room to show us the ropes. She had taken milk from that morning (700 litres!), put it into a huge stainless steel vat and added a culture that made the milk separate into curds and whey. After a whole lot of mixing, the curds started to form up and she carefully and slowly drained and separated the solids from the vat. The next step was to transfer the curds into molds and press even more liquid out with a giant lever. Then the wheels were dipped into a brine bath to form the rind and allowed to age.

The cheese cave was a sight to behold: rows and rows of gouda wheels drying and aging to perfection. They were all sitting there, molding on the outside, but turning delicious and creamy on the inside. It was all dark and cool and peaceful and smelled heavenly. It was like a cheese sanctuary with mediating gouda wheels. Most of the cheese is sold after 3 weeks, but there are some varieties that are allowed to age for 3 or 6 months. The six month cheese was pure nirvana, nutty and full.

Elly and I bought a sampler platter of our favorites to take back to lunch at Chateau Brandeau and gave ourselves a self-guided tour of the barn. The baby cow were so friendly; one kept trying to lick my face like a puppy. Another took a shine to Elly and was licking and sniffing her jeans. A third was mysteriously attracted to my leather handbag and would have eaten it if I hadn't ran away. This gave me a little pang of guilt...like somehow my fashion choice was encouraging cannibalism. Poor little fella didn't know that the attraction was simply a misplaced camaraderie.

Chateau Brandeau

Elly and I arrived to our first farm last week. Chateau Brandeau came on recommendation from a friend as a stellar WWOOFing spot. We packed up our things and boarded an eight hour train across the soggy, green countryside. Surprisingly, there were no (major) hiccups in the journey and we arrived right on time and completely in tact. We did have an amusing moment when we realized that we'd forgotten our wine opener and Elly had to open the cork with a pair of small scissors and a knitting needle. How, you may ask? Sheer, willful persistence (and a tolerance for cork in your glass).

I was starting to think that traveling with Elly necessitated some sort of catastrophe, or at least a delay, but I'm crossing my fingers that the curse is now broken and it's all smooth sailing from here on out. Here's a recap of all the many travel disasters which Elly has been associated with in the past year.

1. Ticket counter riot in at the San Francisco airport on her way out to Hawaii last fall
2. Three days of waiting around the Paris airport last winter due to a snowstorm
3. Cancelled trip to Argentina due to an earthquake (Elly's boyfriend)
4. Week delay to France because of an Icelandic volcano (me)

All of these interrupted journeys either were Elly herself traveling, or someone going to or coming from visiting Elly. After the first couple catastrophies, it began to seem less and less like a series of coincidences and more and more like voodoo. So either the hex is lifted or it doesn't apply to rail transit, because we arrived in a little town just outside of Bordeaux at about 8PM, greeted by a disheveled and friendly British farmer named Fearn. He drove us back to his vineyard, sat us down by a cozy fire and served a wonderfully toasty and generous dinner.

Fearn and Andrea took over the Chateau from Fearn's mother about 25 years ago and are pros at making tasty and traditional Bordeaux wine. It's a small, organic operation and Fearn and Andrea do everything on the farm themselves, with a little help from volunteer works when needed. The patches of vines stretch out in all directions surrounding the chateau, dotted here and there with sheep pastures, a chicken coop, a garden.

There are three other WWOOFers here, all of whom are pretty great. But let me tell your first about the most colorful: Eddy. When we arrived the first evening, there was he was in his white angora sweater and faux fur coat, handing me a glass of wine and offering me a seat by the fire. That about sums up this wonderful man: flaming, hospitable, fabulous. He's a Maori fella from New Zealand and Australia who came here to learn all about viticulture and winemaking so that he can have his own little vineyard here in France one day. He told me his dream the first night: that one day Beyonce and Jay Z will happen upon his gorgeous French tasting room, fall in love with it and finance his own personal paradise. I encouraged him to write them a letter and promised to help direct the accompanying music video to help woo them to the project.

More about Anna, the tractor-driving blonde Spaniard and Phil the tender-hearted bloke from Liverpool to follow...with pictures!

Museums

On a quest to better understand my world, I have become a huge fan of strange museums. It's kind of like reading a crib sheet instead of reading the book...I always feel a bit like I'm cheating, but lord knows I wasn't going read the goddamn book anyway, so what the hell. While I was stuck in New York I got the chance to wander around the Met for a day, visit the Museum of Sex and peruse the odd collections at the Museum of the City of New York. I guess the dorky bookworm in me is a real die hard, cause even as an adult, I really can geek out on some weird-ass shit.

Provence, it turns out, has some really fab museums. Elly and I drove all around the place looking for strange and interesting educational tourism. We really got the bug with the Jacques Cousteau Aquarium and kind of branched out from there. So we ended up driving to some really obscure locations in looking for some really obscure museums.

One day we made the trek to a little hilltop village in the Louberon called Gourdes. It's pretty high up, quaint and very Peter Mayle-esque. Just outside of this town are two sister museums: the Museum of Olive Oil and the Museum of Glass. I found the olive oil museum much more interesting. It was housed in an old Roman structure with an ancient aqueduct system running around the floor and the most gigantic stone mill I'd ever seen. We learned about different methods used to crush and then press the oil, saw some really old oil lamps and learned how to make olive oil soap.

Elly really loved the museum and wanted to know everything possible about how to make the oil. I'm sure she could tell you far more than I could about the history and processes and gadgets. The poor museum lady kept trying to leave to do something else, explaining that we could "explore the museum for ourselves," but every time she tried to go, Elly had another question. I was giggling at her a little in the corner, geeking out myself on the huge, old apparatus and the way the colored light from the window lit up the white stone in the room. In case you haven't picked up on the theme yet, with Elly and I there is hella geeking all the time.

Right next door was the glass museum. If we'd had more time, it probably would have been more engaging, but we kind of flew right through it. It looked promising but time was short. Here's my one tidbit of knowledge gleaned from running through the exhibitions: did you know that glass was opaque for a long time because they couldn't get the kilns hot enough? Makes you wonder what the point was if it wasn't transparent...

Later in the week we wound our way to Grasse in the eastern part of Provence. This little town is renowned for its production of perfume. It started with glove making in the 15th century, but all that tanning of hides had a pretty hideous smell, so, geniuses that they were, they started growing smelly plants to offset it, and eventually began to perfume the gloves themselves. Elly and I went on two perfumery tours and also stopped by the International Museum of Perfumery.

The first perfumery tour was a real bust; we followed the signs to Molinard and went on the complimentary (and really crappy) tour, followed by a nasally offensive sampling of their perfumes. Don't go there. We went next to Fragonard Perfumery. It was the same basic tour as Molinard, but the guide was much more enthusiastic and knowledgeable, and their perfumes actually smelled good. One little educational tidbit this guide shared with us was about the "noses" of the industry. This group of about 80 master perfumers are freelance artists and design almost all of the fragrances in the world. Our guide shared with us that these folks are born with a gift, an elusive ability to compose fragrances in their minds, a gift which has nothing to do with genetics or training. And about 95% of them are old French dudes. What are the odds?

After Fragonard, we headed to the museum and were treated to some of the best interactive displays I've ever experienced. There was a garden with perfume plants, complete with little boxes by the plants so you could smell their distinct aromas while regarding the flowers and vegetation. They had a little machine where you could mix your own scent on the spot. There were thousands of glass perfume containers and rooms full of historical perfume artifacts, some dating back to Egyptian times (the original perfumers, apparently). My favorite exhibit was a history of modern perfumery with the major scents from each era. All those bottles lined up and so beautiful was really inspiring. They also had an room that was an "aroma bath" with music, images and scents all coordinated to induce particular state of mind. It was a frickin' awesome museum.

Elly and I drove back to Aix that night, our little minds brimming with new ideas, our noses full of wonderful aromas, our thirst for the next geek-out satiated for the moment.

Monaco

There are those who come to the south of France to take in the Provencal air, relax into the daily rhythms of the gentle country and sip wine at the cafe from early in the afternoon to late into the balmy night. And then there's me and Elly. We are more apt to see the south of France as ideally situated for seeing a new country every day of the week. Case in point: we decided to go to Monaco last week. It is, after all, only a two hour car ride from Aix-en-Provence, and that Grace Kelly mystique was wafting its siren call to us. So we suited up in our finest (nothing says class and elegance like a faux-tuxedo dress and a silver lame skirt) and took off to the nearest foreign country.

Here's some fun facts about Monaco:

1. The entire country is 3/4 of a square mile
2. One of Europe's most eligible bachelors is the Prince of Monaco, Prince Albert II. He is 52, unmarried and openly speaks about his two illegitimate children (which kind of makes them legitimate, huh?).
3. One of Monaco's greatest legacies is marine conservation advocacy; the country houses the famous Jacques Cousteau Oceanographical Museum

Elly and I played a little game on the drive of holding our breath and making wishes through the tunnels. At first the wishes were kind of modest ("I wish that we win $200 at the casino"), but after the 5th or 6th tunnel we started to get more ambitious. It also could be attributed to the dire lack of oxygen to our brains. Elly's final wish was that we be invited onto a fancy yacht for a weekend cruise to Corsica. We definitely were dressed for such an occasion.

We rolled into Monaco in the early afternoon, had a nice lunch overlooking the bay and then took a stroll around. To our delight, the Grand Prix de Monaco was beginning the next day and so we got to peek at some of the historic cars that would race the following day.

We then wandered around the harbour, looking at all the gigantic yachts and futilely looking for a friend of Elly's who happens to be first mate for a yacht docked there (no luck...apparently asking for a blonde Kiwi named Dave didn't narrow it down enough). But we did see the most darling little chain of kiddie sailing boats launching into the water for a lesson, all their perky, tiny sails bobbing along in a daisy chain. It must be idyllic to grow up in such a small and perfect country.

Eventually we found our way to the marine museum and were treated to a nice mixture of really cool skeletons, formaldehyde remains, aquariums with exotic fish and truly horrendous artwork. It was first class entertainment. The view from the top of the museum was stunning...you could supposedly see all the way to Italy, but it was a bit cloudy. Who can tell anyway without the border drawn onto the countryside?

We also stopped by the famous Monte Carlo Casino, but all the gaming tables were expensive and the slot machines just looked chinsy. We opted instead for a cocktail at the Hotel du Paris across the street. I had a lovely mixture called a snowfall martini; it was a creamy vodka blend with maple syrup and vanilla. Elly had a champagne cocktail and we partook of some first class people-watching while having a really enjoyable conversation about plastic surgery and Botox, inspired by our fellow diners.

I'm really hoping that we'll be able to hit at least a few more countries while we're here. Monaco just didn't feel very substantial after all that driving.